If you’re shopping for a new home security camera, you won’t be stressed out by a lack of options. In fact, there will be a surplus of products to choose from that will give you a headache, and just when you think you’ve made the right purchase, monthly subscriptions, smart docks, and battery packs immediately appear.
Home security cameras may be plentiful now, but 4K options are still pretty scarce. Reolink’s new Argus 4 Pro is a solid 4K option that offers advanced storage features and a single lens to capture an ultra-wide field of view.
Reolink Argus 4 Pro
The Reolink Argus 4 Pro is an advanced 4K camera that uses two separate lenses to achieve a 180-degree horizontal field of view. It supports various local storage options, including integrated FTP storage and a microSD slot. A solar panel is also included with every Argus 4 Pro purchase to provide continuous power.
- Stellar long-distance performance
- Integrated FTP support for advanced local storage
- Includes a solar panel to provide non-stop power.
- Timelines
- No registration 24/7
- The app is a bit impractical.
Privacy, Availability and Specifications
The Reolink Argus 4 Pro is priced at $240 and is available now via Reolink and Amazon. A solar panel is included with purchase.
What’s good about the Argus 4 Pro?
There are plenty of 2K cameras that do the job; I found a great 2K picture myself on the Arlo Essential XL security camera. However, the Reolink Argus 4 Pro is a clear testament to the future of 4K security cameras. This camera’s color night vision is good—it retains a lot of detail but tends to blow out bright light sources, like my neighbor’s porch light—but the real greatness is in its detail retention at long distances.
I installed the Argus 4 Pro in a difficult location, with the nearest sidewalk about 95 feet away and the nearest street another 5-10 feet away. The camera still not only detects motion at that distance, but also distinguishes between people and vehicles. The camera was able to clearly read a license plate at 45-50 feet away; if you installed the Argus 4 Pro next to a street instead of in a 100-foot deep garage like I did, you would be able to read the license plate on every car that passed, and have a very clear picture of every driver while you were there.
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Where can you get a battery that only needs to be charged twice a year?
The Argus 4 Pro’s basic components, such as the built-in siren, speaker, microphone, and mounting process, are satisfactory. It’s an ultra-wide camera, using two lenses on each end to capture 180 degrees of horizontal view (150 degrees more than the Arlo Ultra 2, a similar 4K camera). It won’t blind intruders, but it’ll certainly surprise them.
At 5,000mAh, the battery will last you a few months without charging, but since Reolink includes a solar panel with this camera, that’s not a huge concern. My solar panel got a few hours of direct sunlight on good days but went through several days without sun, and the battery never dipped below 95%. For some reason, though, the Argus 4 Pro’s battery capacity is lower than the 6,000mAh of its predecessor, the Argus 3 Pro. That said, it still outperforms its bigger sibling in most ways.
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It has many of the features of premium cameras, but the cloud storage isn’t great.
Instead of specifying areas of activity where the camera will search for motion, the Argus 4 Pro allows users to set privacy masks. These masks prevent motion detection and block out the area in recordings with a black layer. The image below shows what this mask looks like – the black square on the left.
Having tried this mask and the activity zones on other cameras, I don’t have a strong opinion on which is better. However, I will point out that your neighbors won’t know because they can’t see that you’ve gently blocked their side of the fence from your view. However, this feature can block playgrounds, pools, or other people’s yards from your camera’s view if you choose to do so for safety reasons. I wanted to see everyone in my driveway and yard, but I didn’t necessarily need to know when my neighbor was watering her flowers.
I haven’t seen object size-based detection in cameras other than the Argus 4 Pro. I’ve used my fair share of indoor motion detectors and cameras that claim to use AI-powered detection to determine whether a human or animal is being detected, with varying degrees of success.
For some reason, the Argus 4 Pro’s approach was more consistent. To use this feature, you create a box over a moving object in the frame, like a person, cat, or vehicle. It then tells the camera whether that moving object is the maximum or minimum size. For example, I didn’t need to alert on every vehicle that passed, so I drew a box around a person and told the camera to ignore anything larger.
This would be great in reverse when using the camera indoors; if you just want to know if there is a human inside but don’t want to hear an alarm every time your cat wanders off, just use the minimum size indicator. The camera won’t pick up anything smaller than an adult. I guess you’d just need to be careful of child thieves.
I explored the Argus 4 Pro’s time-lapse feature, which works well. The camera only needs a storage port, such as an SD card or a cradle, and its solar panel (continuous power is important, as I learned when a 12-hour time-lapse used up more than 70% of the camera’s power).
Reolink sets the standard for video storage
The Reolink brand has a generally positive reputation, and there have been no troubling scandals regarding user privacy and data breaches. If you’re moderately sensitive when it comes to this sort of thing, Reolink’s $6/month 30GB cloud storage subscription will suit you just fine.
Prefer local storage? The Argus 4 Pro can store a 128GB archive on board if you add a microSD card, or the $100 Reolink Home Hub offers more secure storage by creating a LAN for your Reolink devices and offering expansion via multiple SD slots.
Most users will have enough storage space. However, to the delight of FTP and NAS users, Reolink is taking secure local storage one step further with the Argus 4 Pro, which can send its video archive directly to an FTP server, encrypted or not, whichever you choose.
I also appreciate that I can save still images and recorded videos (taken directly by the camera, I should point out, no I can record the screen (as I had to do with other cameras) directly to my phone library without needing a paid subscription or SD card or anything else. The only problem is that you have to be quick to act on motion notifications and see the camera’s live view when the event happens.
What’s bad about Reolink Argus 4 Pro?
The hardware here exceeds expectations. Reolink can improve the overall user experience in a few simple ways. I thought a battery-powered camera — which comes with an included solar panel and offers integrated FTP video streaming — might support 24/7 recording, but the Argus 4 Pro only offers motion-triggered recording, which may disappoint shoppers who are deep enough in home security to consider using an FTP server to store the camera’s archive.
The accompanying Reolink app might need a tweak or two. Sometimes it wasn’t helpful, like when my microSD card needed to be formatted and its way of telling me was the message “Storage medium is abnormal.”
The “Tap for help” button below this didn’t lead to anything useful, like a tutorial video, a forum, or a customer service chat. And while the Argus 4 Pro’s 180-degree dual-lens view is great for capturing long hallways or wide yards, it’s not easy to view in portrait mode, so it would be great if the app could stretch the live image to full screen in landscape mode or even split and stack the view in portrait mode.
Should you buy it?
It would be nice if the wide-angle image was easier to view in the app, but overall, I have nothing to complain about. The Reolink Argus 4 Pro may be expensive, but it’s worth the money if you can afford it.
This camera is capable of shooting in wide yards, long hallways, or even indoors in large spaces. The various storage options appeal to those who care more about this aspect. Additionally, since the purchase includes a solar panel, battery life – a weak point in many similar cameras – suddenly becomes irrelevant.
Reolink Argus 4 Pro
The Reolink Argus 4 Pro is a powerful 4K camera with a 180-degree field of view and an included solar panel for continuous power.
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